YOUNG WOODLEY. To 25 November.

London

YOUNG WOODLEY
by John Van Druten

Finborough Theatre 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED
22, 24 Nov 8pm 25 Nov 3pm
Runs 2hr 10min Two intervals

TICKETS: 0870 4000 838 (24hr No booking fee)
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 November

Another love that found it hard to speak its name.
John van Druten’s play proved too much for 1920s Britain; the Lord Chamberlain banned it. So the premiere was in New York, where sex in a British boarding-school seems to have been more palatable. The relationship concerned (even in this revival limited to a held hand and a passionate kiss) is between poetic school-prefect Woodley and unhappily-married master’s wife Laura Simmons.

It’s a long-time coming (act 2) and leads to moral quandaries, anger and regret. The boy loses out, though probably less than poor Laura, who’s left with her dry-stick husband.

Nowadays they’d doubtless flee to freedom, but attitudes and cash limited women then. Beside the adults, Woodley’s fellow-prefects seem a sympathetic lot. Christopher Fletcher and James Bye do a Nice/Nasty role-reversal from their pupil-parts in Tea and Sympathy, this production’s companion in the Finborough’s ‘Out of Bounds’ season. They’re impressive in both plays, showing an adult adoption of easy authority tinged with more childish moments.

Joanna Croll’s Laura has an emotional directness and well-expressed sense of guilt, though the production doesn’t help such a young performer show the difference in age, sophistication and emotional development over Woodley. Robin Chalk’s a perfect prefect, with passion suppressed then engulfing him. Britain’s Lauras, though, have changed much more since the 1920s than the country’s confused adolescents.

Croll isn’t helped by the flatness of Andrew Macbean’s Simmons. Director Adam Penford has neither developed the possibilities in this important role, nor drawn on the later dramatic example of Rattigan’s Crocker-Harris to colour in an unsympathetic schoolmaster in an unhappy marriage.

This leaves Laura’s predicament and Woodley’s fate emotionally forced rather than arising from pressures operating on her husband as much as herself and young Woodley. And, as matters of detail, a gentleman like Woodley senior would surely stand when Laura enters the room; nor should the fag Cope talk to prefects with hands in his pockets.

Laura Main’s Parlourmaid briefly makes her mark, a contrast from Main’s Laura (there are a lot of them about) in Sympathy. She’s an actor to watch, along with other younger-part players in a fascinating, if not revelatory, season.

Cope: James Joyce
Vining: Christopher Fletcher
Ainger: James Bye
Milner: Richard Crawley
Woodley: Robin Chalk
Laura Simmons: Joanna Croll
Mr Simmons: Andrew Macbean
Parlourmaid: Laura Main
Mr Woodley: Andrew Cuthbert

Director: Adam Penford
Designer: Simon Kenny
Lighting: Alex Stone
Sound: Giles Sutton

2006-11-20 02:16:20